ISSN: 1579-9794

Hikma 24 (Número especial II) (2025), 1 - 29

Didactic Intralingual Subtitling and Voice-Over to Enhance

Writing and Speaking Skills: Training English for Specific

Purposes (ESP) Tutors and Teaching Pharmacy

Postgraduates

Subtitulación intralingüística y voces solapadas didácticas

para mejorar la expresión escrita y oral: Formación de

Fecha de recepción: 08/02/2024

Fecha de aceptación: 27/06/2025

Abstract: Language Education (LE) plays a crucial role in overcoming

communication and cultural barriers, fostering global collaboration, and

preparing learners for personal and professional challenges of an

interconnected world. In this setting, the application of innovative language

learning approaches, that can engage learners in a comprehensive way while

fostering motivation, assumes paramount importance. Didactic Audiovisual

Translation (DAT) emerges as a fitting paradigm within this framework, as it

postgraduates as well as training ESP tutors in DAT materials creation. The

research thus employed a two-part experimental procedure. Firstly, a case

study was conducted with four ESP tutors who experienced an online training,

aimed at equipping them with theoretical knowledge and hands-on practice to

create two DAT-based Lesson Plans (LPs): one focused on subtitling and

another on voice-over. Secondly, a pilot study involved nine ESP Pharmacy

postgraduates who carried out the didactic intralingual keyword subtitling and

voice-over LPs developed by the trained ESP tutors. The paper details the

ESP training experience, drawing from data gathered through a feedback

questionnaire and standardized open-ended interviews, offering insights into

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on the enhancement of writing and speaking skills.

Keywords: Didactic subtitling, Didactic voice-over, Writing skills, Speaking

skills, English for Specific Purposes

Resumen: La enseñanza de idiomas desempeña un papel crucial para la

superación de las barreras comunicativas y culturales, el fomento de la

colaboración global y la preparación del alumnado para enfrentarse a retos

tantos personales como profesionales en un mundo interconectado. En este

contexto, la aplicación de enfoques innovadores para el aprendizaje de

idiomas, capaces de implicar a los alumnos de forma integral y de fomentar

en prensa). Este estudio explora la potencial sinergia de combinar la

subtitulación intralingüística y las voces solapadas didácticas para mejorar las

destrezas de escritura y expresión oral de estudiantes posgraduados de

Inglés para Fines Específicos (IFE), así como para formar a los tutores de IFE

en la creación de materiales de TAD. La investigación utilizó un procedimiento

experimental de dos partes. En primer lugar, se realizó un estudio de caso

con cuatro tutores de IFE que recibieron formación en línea, con el objetivo

de dotarlos de conocimientos teóricos y prácticos para crear dos

planificaciones de clase basadas en la TAD: una centrado en la subtitulación

y otra en las voces solapadas. En segundo lugar, se llevó a cabo un estudio

continuación, se presenta la metodología del estudio piloto, los resultados y

el análisis de los datos de las pruebas previas y posteriores de expresión

escrita y oral, de un cuestionario final y de las observaciones de la

Jennifer Lertola 3

Hikma 24 (Número especial II) (2025), 1 - 29

escrita.

Palabras clave: Subtitulación didáctica, Voces solapadas didácticas,

Expresión escrita, Expresión oral, Inglés para Fines Específicos

INTRODUCTION

role in addressing various professional challenges by fostering effective

communication in international settings. Proficiency in a foreign/second

language facilitates cultural understanding and promotes collaboration in an

interconnected global community. It enhances individuals’ flexibility, allowing

them to navigate diverse linguistic and cultural contexts. LE contributes to

industry. As global health challenges continue to rise, the demand for skilled

pharmacists on an international scale is increasing. In particular, graduates

can explore diverse opportunities such as working in multinational

pharmaceutical companies, engaging in international research collaborations,

contributing to global health initiatives, and participating in drug development

as well regulatory affairs on an international level. The globalisation of

pharmaceutical markets also opens avenues for pharmacy graduates to work

in areas such as pharmacovigilance, quality assurance, and supply chain

management on a global scale. Building cross-cultural competencies and

staying abreast of international regulations as well as advancements are

which LE, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and

pedagogy come together to create teaching resources at the service of

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mediation in different educational settings (Lertola, 2019; Talaván, 2020;

Talaván et al., 2023). Nonetheless, experimental research on DAT has

predominantly involved the individual utilisation of DAT modes, with a paucity

of research addressing the employment of combined modes.

keyword subtitling and voice-over to enhance writing and speaking skills. To

this purpose, the research employed an experimental procedure which is

made up of two parts. The first part was to train four English for Specific

Purposes (ESP) tutors through a tailored-made online training course which

provided them with theoretical knowledge and hands-on-practice to create two

DAT-based Lesson Plans (LPs), namely one subtitling and one voice-over LP.

The second part was a pilot study which involved nine ESP Pharmacy

postgraduates who carried out the didactic intralingual keyword subtitling and

and speaking pre- and post-tests, a final feedback questionnaire, as well as

the teacher/researcher’s observations.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW

been progressively setting over the past two decades. Indeed, it finds a solid

foundation in numerous theoretical and empirical studies (Talaván et al.,

2023). An increasing number of experimental studies corroborate the

effectiveness of DAT tasks, including subtitling, dubbing, audio description

both single and integrated language skills, encompassing oral and written

reception/production, as well as mediation (Lertola, 2019; Fernández-

Costales et al., 2023). Didactic subtitling and dubbing have been the most

studied DAT modes. However, academics and teachers are gradually

employing a wider range of DAT modes. Notably, accessibility modes such as

audio description and SDH have been particularly well-received by learners.

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acquisition (Talaván et al., 2016). A total of 41 English-B1 undergraduates

carried out ten intralingual subtitling tasks using short, pre-selected videos

from an American sitcom over a period of one and a half months. The project

also facilitated peer-to-peer assessment through active engagement in online

forums. Findings revealed benefits in terms of enhancing writing and

vocabulary skills, while also offering additional insights into the ideal

employed in ESP. Two experimental studies which involved students of

engineering and architecture report promising results for the enhancement of

receptive as well as productive skills (González-Vera, 2021 y 2022). The first

study researched the potential benefits of intralingual keyword subtitling for

the development of listening skills with 80 final-year students of engineering

subdivided into small groups, was required to carry out intralingual didactic

subtitling and didactic dubbing tasks. Based on the analysis of questionnaires

suggested by latest research. As in the case of intralingual subtitling, further

investigation is currently needed. In an innovative research endeavour,

Talaván and Rodríguez-Arancón (2018) explored the potential of didactic

voice-over to improve the pronunciation and intonation of eight C1 English

students in an online environment. Participants dedicated up to four hours per

week to create voice-overs for four short American advertisements from the

1950s and 1960s. Besides the voice-over task, learners carried out a guided-

dubbing task, and also a creative revoicing task. The three revoiced versions

of the four video clips were then published on a YouTube channel for self- and

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educational field. Furthermore, she emphasized the importance of

incorporating didactic voice-over as part of a comprehensive methodological

sequence to maximize its pedagogical impact. In the second volume of the

edited book, Ogea-Pozo (2022) presented a didactic voice-over

proposal−partly based on the DAT methodology (Talaván, 2021)−designed

and carried out with 100 university students of Audiovisual Translation (AVT).

translation skills as well as the degree of involvement in the simulation of team

translation. It should be noted that one of the most innovative and highly

Cooperation (ESoP) approach (Tinedo-Rodríguez, 2022). To this purpose,

research (Gómez-Parra, 2018), the author concluded that DAT is considerably

compatible with the CLIL methodology and also stated that the ESoP

approach (Huertas-Abril and Gómez-Parra, 2018) proves highly valuable for

addressing interdisciplinary themes in LE.

as language combinations (i,e., intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic). To

this regard, interlingual and intralingual have been the most used combination

in DAT tasks. In more recent times, the creative aspect in DAT has been taken

into consideration, although mainly regarding didactic subtitling and dubbing

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speaking skills (through the recordings of the revoicing tracks they need to

synchronize with the video), listening skills (by attending to the original track),

vocabulary and grammatical knowledge (through reception and production),

and cultural awareness (depending on the selected video extract). These

considerations might also be appropriate for didactic voice-over since it entails

listening to the original, writing the script, and reading it while revoicing.

potential advantages of DAT by supporting a number of research-led projects.

At the European level, the inaugural project that laid the foundation for

international collaboration and introduced specially designed software for

language learning was LeViS-Learning via Subtitling (2006-2008) (Sokoli et

captioning and revoicing DAT modes within the same platform. Furthermore,

a variety of ready-to-use DAT tasks were available in different languages

European Regional Development Fund. PluriTAV introduced an innovative

perspective by enhancing plurilingual competence through a number of

comprehensive DAT sequences designed for face-to-face learning contexts

(Baños et al., 2021; Cerezo-Merchán and Reverter-Oliver, 2022). More

recently, the TRADILEX-Audiovisual Translation as a Didactic Resource in

Foreign Language Education project (2020-2023) funded by the Spanish

Ministry of Science and Innovation, developed a methodological DAT proposal

and created a user-friendly platform tradilex.es with currently more than 60

LPs for B1-B2 English as a Foreign Language learners, suitable for online and

face-to-face educational settings (Fernández-Costales et al., 2023; Talaván

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training. Among the outcomes of the TRADILEX project, a MOOC (Massive

Open Online Course) on DAT titled TRAVEL-La traducción audiovisual y el

aprendizaje de lenguas was specifically developed for teacher training. From

2021 onwards, the MOOC TRAVEL is offered (in Spanish) by UNED Abierta.

Since the first edition, in which as many as 420 teachers have been enrolled,

until its fourth edition more than 1000 participants enrolled in the MOOC

(Lertola et al., 2022). The MOOC comprises five modules and each weekly

module includes a number of video tutorials, a forum, self-assessment and

further materials. Participants are assessed through a final exam and their

teaching materials for diverse DAT modes.

teacher training yielded insightful and positive outcomes, as documented by

more than 50% of teachers participated in the MOOC-TRAVEL provided by

the TRADILEX project; with over half of them completely agreeing that the

training was beneficial and easy to follow, enhanced their understanding of

their collaboration with the project, emphasized the value of AVT in the foreign

language classroom, and offered ideas for tasks they could use in their

lessons. Additionally, approximately 40% of teachers expressed willingness

to attend or recommend similar teacher training courses. Data analysis

indicated that teacher training meaningfully enhanced the implementation of

DAT methodology. The authors also recognized that the TRADILEX

sequence, covering all five DAT modes, enabled teachers to identify the mode

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dependency.

their proficiency level was C2. Regarding their background, one of them was

a former Pharmacy graduate, one was a medical doctor, and two were

biomedical laboratory technicians. Furthermore, three of them had had

previous experience in teaching English in their own countries. Therefore, they

were all suitable tutors for creating teaching materials for postgraduates of

Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies.

Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. The online training was divided into 14 stages

over six months (each stage lasted about two weeks) as outlined in Table 1.

Each stage was planned to last one week but tutors were given extra time

upon their own request.

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and the refinement of teaching strategies. The third and last reason is

community building and networking which allows tutors to share best practices

and engage in the review of others, thus fostering a sense of community and

a supportive network. Once again, T4 provided a novel perspective by stating

that the peer-to-peer review part was one of the most entertaining aspects of

the training, as it gave rise to a certain degree of competition between the two

opinion on the online tutoring course to ascertain whether they felt it prepared

them adequately for the role of LP creator. All tutors felt the online training

course had satisfactorily prepared them both at theoretical and practical level.

Nevertheless, T3 suggested to clearly state the goals of the course, and